A "lack" of writing and thinking well

     At yesterday’s Academic Senate meeting, senators were at one point obliged to read a document, evidently produced by a district committee or committees, that lists “barriers” to “Mutual Respect, Cooperation and Collaboration.”
     Yes, as I understand it, the document is yet another product of our seemingly endless and largely absurd effort to address the accrediting agency’s “recommendations.” These recommendations are in fact tasks issued by the Accreds in order to address problems at our college(s) that they have identified.
     For instance, in February, in a letter, the Accreds issued three recommendations, including this one:

[We] recommend that the district provide a clear delineation of its functional responsibilities, the district level process for decision making and the role of the district in college planning and decision-making…. 

     The letter stated that, despite recent “warnings” that it is out of compliance with the relevant standards, our college (IVC) has made enough progress that it is hereby declared "accredited." Nevertheless, the college must now produce a report that demonstrates that it has “addressed” the three recommendations, including the one above.
     I call our accreditation labors absurd in part because the process is so slow and cumbersome and generally ridiculous that, at times, the Accreds’ recommendations arrive only after the problem that gave rise to the recommendations has been largely overcome. But the Accred Machine will not stop; nor will it adjust.

     Consider: there’s been much fear and distrust—and “disrespecting”—in our district, owing in large part to the ruthlessness and pettiness and connivery of former district Chancellor (and nakedly ambitious wannabe) Raghu P. Mathur. (He's presently running for Laguna Hills City Council.)
     But Mathur left the district more than two years ago!
     Nevertheless, here we are, still addressing the absence of "mutual respect” (a euphemism, really, for prevailing Mathurian realpolitik) and the fear and distrust that it long engendered in dark, dark Raghustan. (Arguably, the atmosphere of hostility and fear was caused also by the bullying realpolitik of trustees Don Wagner and the late Tom Fuentes. But they, too, are long gone. In truth, we have a much better board and chancellor now. Admittedly, there seems to be some bullying at IVC that is unrelated to the Mathurian crowd.)
     So, do we write the Accreds, advising them that their recommendations are (to a degree) inappropriate because the source of the underlying problem is now gone?
     No, we do not. (Or we do, but this gets us absolutely nowhere.) Instead, like the Queen Mary or maybe the Titanic, we uselessly set about to turn the whole goddam operation around in mid-ocean. It’s a mammoth undertaking, and it is pretty dishonest; plus its pointless. But we are bound to do it anyway.
     Absurd.

     Back to yesterday’s Academic Senate meeting:
     In the course of addressing the Accreds' recommendations, a group (or groups) within the district have arrived at a list of five "barriers" (do these people realize that this is a metaphor?) to "mutual-respect" and "cooperation." Here they are:

Barrier 1: Unhealthy competition within and between IVC, Saddleback, and District Services.
Barrier 2: Lack of utilizing data and metrics for decision-making.
Barrier 3: Circumvention and lack of established policies, procedures, and protocols.
Barrier 4: Lack of district-wide perspective and mutual understanding and acceptance of the roles of each college and district services.
Barrier 5: Lack of district policy encouraging civility, respect, and collegial behavior

     Now, I won’t launch into a critique of the entire list, although someone really should do that.
     Nope, I want to focus on “barrier” #2 in particular. I don't really have a problem with 2, but I do have a problem with how it's expressed.
     Let’s read it again:

Lack of utilizing data and metrics for decision-making.

     Lack of utilizing data? Really?
     Suppose a man stands on railroad tracks and is fatally run down by a train. How should we describe this? Was there a “lack” of getting out of the train’s way?
     And what’s with the word “utilizing”? People who go to college learn to avoid “utilize” when “use” is adequate. Students are advised that, though there may be special situations in which the word “utilize” is appropriate, unnecessarily opting for “utilize” is pretentious. It is the writing of someone who is trying hard to sound important. (See this and this and this)
     Could it be that the crew who arrived at “barrier” #2 missed out on this familiar advice?
     If so, what are they doing in positions of authority at a college?
     “Metrics” is another word that is over-used by people who have little to say but who want to sound impressive nonetheless. The word refers to measurement or the results of measurement. And so “data and metrics” refers to—data. (See Economist style guide. See also here and here.)
     OK, let me give this thing a shot. What might the authors of "barrier 2" really be trying to say? How about:

[One impediment to mutual respect and cooperation in the district is the] failure to make decisions based on available information.

     Well, yeah.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "I am the horizon you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso"

Backdrop addresses cowboy

~ Margaret Atwood

Starspangled cowboy
sauntering out of the almost-
silly West, on your face
a porcelain grin,
tugging a papier-mâché cactus
on wheels behind you with a string,

you are innocent as a bathtub
full of bullets.

Your righteous eyes, your laconic
trigger-fingers
people the streets with villains:
as you move, the air in front of you
blossoms with targets

and you leave behind you a heroic
trail of desolation:
beer bottles
slaughtered by the side
of the road, bird-
skulls bleaching in the sunset.

I ought to be watching
from behind a cliff or a cardboard storefront
when the shooting starts, hands clasped
in admiration,
but I am elsewhere.

Then what about me

what about the I
confronting you on that border,
you are always trying to cross?

I am the horizon
you ride towards, the thing you can never lasso

I am also what surrounds you:
my brain
scattered with your
tincans, bones, empty shells,
the litter of your invasions.

I am the space you desecrate
as you pass through.

*

Landmark community college bill heads to governor (EdSource)

     One day after a survey warned that budget cuts have caused an unprecedented drop in enrollment at California’s community colleges, the state Legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill that could bring the first significant reforms in more than a decade to community colleges.
     The Student Success Act of 2012, by Democratic Senators Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach and Carol Liu of La Cañada Flintridge, received nearly unanimous bipartisan support. It would give new students more support early on, including orientation and better academic counseling, in an effort to improve dismal graduation rates. Only about a third of community college students earn an associate degree or a certificate, or transfer to a four-year college within six years.
     “While many students are getting out of the starting blocks at our community colleges, many fail to get across the finish line,” said Lowenthal in a written statement following Thursday’s vote. “This situation is unacceptable by any measure and demands immediate change.”
     The bill stems from the work of the Student Success Task Force, a panel established by the Legislature that developed 22 recommendations aimed at improving completion rates for students through a combination of financial and academic incentives, as well as reprioritizing resources….

Grade inflation: trustees gave themselves A's and B's. Evidence of discord

     Back in February and March, members of the SOCCCD board of trustees performed a “self evaluation” that included a survey that asked trustees to rate dozens of (positive) statements from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” (“Neutral” was the middle choice.)
     Seven people—presumably, the seven elected trustees—took the survey.
     Predictably, trustees generally gave themselves high grades. With regard to the vast majority of statements, most trustees gave the board either an A (strongly agree) or a B (agree).
     See for yourself: here (pdf)
     But there were a few exceptions. In a few cases, one trustee gave the board a D (disagree).
     More interestingly, in a few cases, multiple trustees gave the board a D. And, in some cases, several trustees selected the “neutral” (C) score:

The board expresses its authority only as a unit. Not?

Some trustees seem to think that some trustees are south of ethical, I guess.

Slow down and count the posies.

The Earth moved

     Some time after 1:00 p.m. today, I was lecturing in my Philosophy 2 (Ethics) course, yammerin' about our foolishness re earthquakes and such. Then, at 1:30, my students seemed suddenly to be highly entertained, in a wide-eyed sort of way, by something ("not me," I thought).
     Eventually, they told me that we'd just experienced a goshdarned earthquake—I must've been levitating at the time—caused by the usual tensions between sections of earthy crustiness.
     Alternatively, the Lord was briefly peeved about all that pious buggery and feculent caterwauling over in Tampa, Florida, and took it out on Yorba freakin' Linda. That's how He rolls, it seems.

Survey offers dire picture of California's two-year colleges (LA Times)
As demand increases but funding is cut, 470,000 students find themselves on waiting lists for needed classes. Things will get worse if further cuts become necessary.

     More than 470,000 community college students are beginning the fall semester on waiting lists, unable to get into the courses they need, according to a survey of California's two-year colleges that captures a system struggling amid severe budget cuts. (continued…

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "the dark fertile life / You were always giving gifts to"

A poem for the first week of classes, about teachers, colleagues and students, parents and children.

For Elizabeth Bishop

~Sandra McPherson

The child I left your class to have
Later had a habit of sleeping
With her arms around a globe
She’d unscrewed, dropped, and dented.
I always felt she could possess it,
The pink countries and the mauve
And the ocean which got to keep its blue.
Coming from the Southern Hemisphere to teach,
Which you had never had to do, you took
A bare-walled room, alone, its northern
Windowscapes as gray as walls.
To decorate, you’d only brought a black madonna.
I thought you must have skipped summer that year,
Southern winter, southern spring, then north
For winter over again. Still, it pleased you
To take credit for introducing us,
And later to bring our daughter a small flipbook
Of partners dancing, and a ring
With a secret whistle. —All are
Broken now like her globe, but she remembers
Them as I recall the black madonna
Facing you across the room so that
In a way you had the dark fertile life
You were always giving gifts to.
Your smaller admirer off to school,
I take the globe and roll it away: where
On it now is someone like you?

*